Dish Networks (which is, incidentally, dropping the “Networks” and just going by “Dish”) unveiled a new multi-room DVR system at CES, called Hopper.

The Hopper system has a cool feature, which is additional boxes called Joeys, which can go in several rooms in a household. Impressively, the system has 2 terabytes of storage, and can auto-record up to eight days of primetime shows on major networks, giving viewers a chance to watch the programs at their leisure rather than racing against a rapidly shrinking DVR storage cache or risking deleting unwatched shows. (Sure, these are first world problems, but it’s nice to be able to use a service you paid for- and at about $80 a month, Dish’s Hopper isn’t mega-cheap.)

Regarding the new products, Dish said:

“While other DVRs in the industry have limited DVR sharing capabilities, the Hopper and Joey system offers the ability, from up to four rooms, to manage their DVR, record and play back HD shows, and watch live HD programs.”

Indeed, it’s very cool to see that the company is thinking forward and opening up viewing options to users to match existing technology instead of artificially limiting it. Would you get Dish’s Hopper if it were available in your area?

Nosgoth1979

Personally, I can’t wait to get it. I may be a bit biased though, being that I’m an employee, but I was simply a subscriber for years before that, and I don’t mind saying that I’d been hoping for a whole home DVR for some time. Now that it looks like I’m getting my wish, it appears like it’s going to blow my expectations away. I mean 250 high definition hours of recording time shows us that they’re concerned with the big-picture, and features like having a remote-finder function shows the engineering team paid attention to the little details too. I’m psyched and hope to have one in my house soon.

Anonymous

Nosgoth, did you ever get upgraded to the Hopper? I got one back in March and it has changed the way my family watches TV. Once we argued over what shows to record but that is no longer an issue thanks to Primetime Anytime. It seems there have been some upgrades to the Hopper since you first posted; Dish has added support for Pandora and doubled the recording space to 500 hours of HD. More recently, I discovered a huge update after a long night working at Dish last week. It’s called Auto Hop and it first introduced itself to me when I chose an episode of NCIS from Primetime Anytime. A pop up asked me if I wanted to skip all of the commercials for that episode. Who would say no? If you did get a Hopper, what do you think of the changes?

Sam Kennison

I don’t understand why CBS, FOX, & NBC execs don’t want us to enjoy commercial-free TV. I’m a DISH employee – AutoHop is great because you can easily watch commercial-free TV. Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, is taking a stand for consumers by creating a petition that tells CBS, FOX, & NBC media to keep their hands out of your living room & DVR. Sign their petition to keep control of how you watch TV http://bit.ly/KFdn1Q.